


120 Required Credit Hours In Soulless Purgatory

by illuminis



Category: UP10TION, X1 (Korea Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Angst, Attempt at Humor, Comedy, Fluff and Angst, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-26
Updated: 2020-11-26
Packaged: 2021-03-09 20:14:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,168
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27721970
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/illuminis/pseuds/illuminis
Summary: Maybe they should've investigated about their classes better. Maybe they shouldn't have assumed that "University 101" was a silly joke made by the dean and not an actual, mandatory class. Maybe they shouldn't have avoided this one class to save time. Now, they are stuck with 9 other dudes and a prying teacher in the same classroom, with assignments that reveal things about their inner selves more than they would like to.Or, ten different persons learn how to work with each other. But not everything is a flowery path.
Relationships: Other Relationship Tags to Be Added
Comments: 1
Kudos: 1





	120 Required Credit Hours In Soulless Purgatory

It had been a dreamless night. Minsoo had not slept more than 4 hours when he was brought back into consciousness by the drilling sound of his 6:30 alarm. It made an ear splitting sound that tore his brain apart, and the way the clock bounced up and down comically made it seem as if it were laughing at the fact that he had just interrupted someone’s most vulnerable state. Had he had a knife in that moment, he would have gotten up and destroyed it without mercy. It rang again. Releasing a tired sigh, he turned the alarm off.

The only thought that his half-awake brain could form while doing his morning routine was a carton cup of the crappy, way too hot three dollar coffee from the little convenience store near campus. No one but him bought from there, everyone saying the taste was too bitter to be drinkable. But Minsoo had developed an obsession with the feeling of his throat burning while chugging it down in one go. The shop clerk always looked at him as if he had just murdered his dog in front of him whenever he did that. 

Caffeine never kicked in, though. At some point he had become immune to it. Minsoo was sitting in the large lecture hall playing with the straw of an empty iced americano cup with one hand while resting his cheek on the other one. He was doing anything to keep himself awake, but his vision was becoming blurry and his eyes were closing. His eyelids started to become heavier, and eventually they fell shut.

A little too aggressive nudge on the ribs jerked him awake, a familiar voice greeting him.

“You’re drooling.”

Minsoo came into his senses faster than a cat in ice water and wiped the gooey liquid off his mouth. Drowsiness wore off fairly quickly, but traces of it were still lingering around his brain.

“How long was I gone for?” he asked, his voice coming out hoarser than expected.

“A good while. You didn’t miss anything but class’ almost over.” His classmate replied. “Let me assume, tough night?”

“Yeah…” Minsoo sighed, checking his watch. The class was indeed reaching its end. “I stayed up studying Physiology.” He shook his head. “Worst subject on earth.” 

“That class is kicking your ass isn’t it…” the other giggled. “Feel you, I don’t understand a word of what the Anatomy teacher says.”

After a few minutes, the huge rusty bell rang loudly, startling everyone in the room. The teacher dismissed them with a wave of his hand and soon everyone started gathering their stuff. 

“Well that was fun, guess I’ll see you at five?” his friend asked, pulling the strap of his bag over his shoulder.

“It’s Monday…?” Minsoo frowned. He had no idea what he meant. ”We don’t have any more classes together today.”

“Oh…” He started carefully. “You didn’t get the email?” 

“What email?” 

The student turned around at lightning speed and trotted his way to the exit. Minsoo stayed where he was but kept calling the other one to no avail.

“Sooil, what email?!”

As if on cue, his phone vibrated on his coat. The e-mail notification decorating his screen.

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

.

.

.

It had been a while since Minsoo felt regret. 

The last time he experienced this emotion traced back to when he was a little kid. He had lied to his mom about stealing a pack of candies from the local grocery store. Sadly for him, she caught Minsoo eating the treats one night and he got grounded for an entire month. It still stuck with him, flinching every time he would see the cursed candies on the shelves. But this wasn’t comparable to not being able to play outside with other kids, it was much worse than that. 

He had been told horror stories from his grandfather about his first year of college. Being an insecure 19 year old teen, he had asked him for guidance and if this really was the path he wanted to follow. The doctor talked about how he almost dropped out in the beginning because of the immense amount of workload. _It was suffocating_ , he had said. This made Minsoo incredibly scared, to the point of strictly planning his schedule and deciding to not take any of the electives available. All of them were unnecessary and didn’t have a real effect on his grade, so he brushed it off and went on with his life. 

So to say that his reaction was one of surprise when he was told that University 101 was, in fact, _not_ an _elective_ and was required for _graduation_ , would be diminishing how he actually felt. Minsoo saw red. He cursed in all the languages he knew and even in the ones he didn’t and shut the door of the dean’s office a little bit harder than he should have. Minsoo was often praised for his politeness, but he couldn’t have cared less when first year was child’s play compared to the second one and another class that had nothing to do with his major just added more weight to his already immense pile of stress. 

He didn’t have time for this. Who the fuck names a class “University 101", anyways? 

_Maybe it won’t be so bad_ , he thought as he chugged down his third cup of coffee of the day.

.

.

.

It was bad.

The classroom, if you could call it that, was not much bigger than his dorm. Minsoo knew that it was located on one of the old buildings of the campus, but he wasn’t expecting it to look so… obsolete.

It seemed as if it had been ages since someone had stood in the room. A thick layer of dust was clinging onto every surface, a cobweb hanging on under the desk. Along with it, exactly ten wooden seats fit the area, all of them looking like they had been carved to perfection, except that the material was growing to be moldy. The walls were a faded green, and there was a big shelf at the back full of old maps and books that looked like they could disintegrate at the slightest touch. The smell wasn’t helping his first impression either. It was dry and musty and Minsoo had to fight himself to not pull out his handkerchief and cover his nose.

“You’re late, Go.” The teacher said, pointing at the clock on the wall. “If I were your patient, I would be dead already.” 

Minsoo tried to not roll his eyes. He had arrived 5 minutes behind schedule. 

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Jang.” He apologized. “It won’t happen again.”

He had seen the infamous Mr. Jang around campus before. She was said to be one of the scariest teachers of the Psychology area, and not because she was strict with her grades. Some of her peers often praised her near-supernatural analytical skills, her hawk-like eyes making you feel as if every part of your persona was being scrutinized by her. She was tall and thin, her red cardigan fit loosely on her, almost as if it were one size too big. Jang Hyelin had an undescribable, weird aura around her.

She looked at him for a few more seconds and then nodded, motioning for him to take a seat.

As he sat down, he scanned his surroundings in hopes to find a familiar face. Sooil, who was sitting at his side, offered him a shy smile and Minsoo mimicked the gesture. Looking around, he recognized one of the students as Wooseok, someone who he used to be friendly with during high school. His best friend, Jinhyuk, known to follow the smaller one everywhere like a loyal golden retriever was seated behind him, a mischievous grin plastered on his face as he poked Wooseok in the back, the latter looking five seconds away from commiting murder. 

“Welcome to the _mandatory_ University 101 class,” Mrs. Jang started, writing on the dirty chalkboard. “We would’ve gotten a better classroom if you had been the responsible students you are expected to be.”

A guy seated at his left was fidgeting. He was young, but it didn’t seem like there was much of an age gap between him and Minsoo. Probably one or two years younger. His messy brown hair was covering his eyes and the hands that could not stop moving had old, half moon shaped nail marks covering his entire palm. When the boy caught him staring, Minsoo quickly put his attention back to the board.

“Now, this class has a start time but not an ending one,” The teacher said, pulling her feet onto the fragile desk. “It can last five minutes or five hours, it all depends on you.” 

“What does that mean?” A silvery voice asked.

Minsoo tried to connect the voice to a face, or a body. It was a few tones higher than the average voice and it was just interesting to hear. Unfortunately for him, whoever it was did not speak again. 

“It depends on the amount of interest you have in the topic of the assigned project,” Mrs. Jang explained, tilting her head slightly. “Every week I will give you a sheet of paper with the instructions you need to elaborate it and some of them cannot be worked on outside the class. So, you can either half-ass your work and leave ten minutes in, or do a good job that is expected from a college student but leave the classroom ten hours later.”

“Though,” She smirked. “You cannot leave the room until all ten of you are finished.”

Minsoo saw from the corner of his eye that the fidgeting student stopped abruptly. He felt like he just had gotten slapped in the face while a bucket of icy water was being poured onto him. The rest of his new classmates were equally astonished, a faint gasp being the only sound that broke the sepulchral silence. Minsoo suddenly saw himself standing in front of his freshly dug grave, his new teacher laughing as she grabbed the shiny shovel that would do the job of burying him. When Minsoo saw the dirt land on his coffin, he quickly closed his eyes and forced himself to go back to reality. 

He was doomed.

The teacher raised her eyebrows and smiled to herself, clearly satisfied with the reaction. “Well, let’s start with the first topic.”

His vision went blurry after that.

.

.

.

A gentle tuck pulled him away from his inadequate nap.

Sooil pointed at his mouth. “You really need to fix that.”

He didn’t know if he was referring to his worrying sleeping habits or the drooling. Probably both. He straightened his back and cleared his throat, ashamed. 

“Now that Mr. Go decided to join us again,” Mr. Jang pointed out, not even looking at him. Minsoo shifted in his seat uncomfortably. “I will explain your first assignment.”

Wooseok loudly searched something on his expensive plastic pencil case, making the other people in the room, including Mr. Jang, look confusedly at his way. He grabbed a dark blue marker and opened his obviously new, glittery notebook. He carefully wrote in cursive the words “1st Project” and decorated it with whiteout dots, giving it a Broadway theater ad look. 

It was Mrs. Jang turn to roll her eyes.

“You must be curious as to why I didn’t ask for your names,” The teacher walked by their seats, giving each one of them a yellow folder, “That will be your first project, a five slide powerpoint presentation about who you are and why you’re here.” 

“What’s a powerpoint?” Jinhyuk asked.

She stopped mid action and looked at him, visibly confused.“You don’t know what a powerpoint is?”

“It’s the first time I’ve heard of it,” The student replied, playing with his overly chewed pencil.

She glared at him. “Google it.”

Mrs. Jang finished her task and turned around to check the clock on the wall. Releasing a tired sigh, she walked to her desk and pulled out a little mint green agenda from her suitcase and wrote something on it while mumbling to herself.

“First session… thirty four minutes…” 

She closed the mini notebook with a quiet _thud_ and took out her iPhone 4 from her pocket. _An iPhone 4? Those still function in 2020?_ Minsoo thought.

They did, and very well.

The little phone blasted one of the most deafening bell sounds louder than the actual, materialized bells scattered around school. He immediately brought his hands up to his ears trying to block out most of the noise. This was worse than when his sister would sing at full volume idol group songs at 3 in the morning when he was trying to catch some precious sleep. He swore that if he heard “ _yeogi yeogi buteora_ ” one more time, he was actually going to go insane.

“CLASS IS OVER!” Mrs. Jang yelled. “YOU MAY LEAVE NOW!”

He was absolutely going to _despise_ this class.

**Author's Note:**

> work be will updated regularly! and yes, tags will be revealed as the story progresses. if anyone reads, make your guesses!


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